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Last month, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put on a great dog-and-pony show to make it look like Toomey was working to get his home-state nominees confirmed. This afternoon, Toomey had a chance to really support those nominees, and he was – surprise! – missing in action.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked for unanimous consent for the Senate to vote to confirm all 15 federal district court nominees pending on the Senate floor. Most have been waiting for more than four months since committee approval for a floor vote, including two from Pennsylvania who were jointly recommended by Sens. Toomey and Bob Casey. In fact, six of the nominees have been waiting for a vote since last year!

McConnell objected. Toomey was nowhere to be found to stand up for his nominees, who would fill vacancies that have been open since August and September of 2013.

Then Sen. Warren sought unanimous consent to vote on a smaller list, one that still included the Pennsylvania nominees. And once again, McConnell objected, and Toomey was nowhere to be found.

(Warren then tried with only four non-Pennsylvania nominees, then only one, but her efforts were nevertheless shot down, this time by Republican Orrin Hatch.)

This would have been a great opportunity for Toomey to stand up to his party boss and demand a vote for his nominees, who were fully vetted and approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee way back in January. As a member of the majority party, Toomey’s requests would presumably carry more weight with McConnell than Casey’s. But we’ll never know, because Toomey would not publicly stand up against McConnell.

This is sadly reminiscent of Toomey’s non-supportive “support” for Pennsylvanian Phil Restrepo for the Third Circuit, when Toomey cooperated with GOP leadership in their efforts to slow down the confirmation process as much as possible.

And of course, Toomey quickly obeyed when McConnell demanded that his fellow Republicans refuse to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. This unprecedented act of obstruction has significant harmful consequences, as described in a recent report by our affiliate People For the American Way Foundation and the Constitutional Accountability Center.

So perhaps Toomey could adopt this as a campaign slogan:

Pat Toomey: Putting Pennsylvania first (Except when his Washington DC party boss tells him not to)

Note to senators in tough reelection battles: putting your Washington DC party bosses over the Constitution by standing in the way of filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court is not only the wrong thing to do for our country, it’s also making voters less likely to support you.

New Public Policy Polling surveys released today show that large majorities of voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Senators Pat Toomey and Rob Portman are running for reelection, want the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death to be filled this year. According to the polling memo:

Strong majorities of voters – 58/35 in Ohio and 57/40 in Pennsylvania – think that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled this year. What’s particularly noteworthy about those numbers – and concerning for Portman and Toomey – is how emphatic the support for approving a replacement is among independent voters. In Ohio they think a new Justice should be named this year 70/24 and in Pennsylvania it’s 60/37.

…Voters are particularly angry about Senators taking the stance that they’re not going to approve anyone before even knowing who President Obama decides to put forward. By a 76/20 spread in Pennsylvania and a 74/18 one in Ohio, voters think the Senate should wait to see who is nominated to the Court before deciding whether or not to confirm that person. Toomey and Portman are out of line even with their own party base on that one – Republicans in Pennsylvania think 67/27 and in Ohio think 63/32 that the Senate should at least give President Obama’s choice a chance before deciding whether or not to confirm them. [emphasis added]

Perhaps most notable for the senators, more than half of voters (52 percent in both states) say they would be less likely to vote for Toomey or Portman if they “refused to confirm a replacement for Justice Scalia this year no matter who it was.” Among independents, the numbers were even higher.

Senators Toomey and Portman would be wise to take heed of their constituents, and of the Constitution, and stop refusing to even consider any Supreme Court nominee, regardless of his or her credentials. Any nominee must be treated fairly and honestly. The Supreme Court is far too important to be held hostage to the overtly political obstruction of GOP senators.

Pennsylvania’s Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been harshly criticized for collaborating with his party’s efforts to obstruct Third Circuit nominee L. Felipe Restrepo a judicial nominee from Pennsylvania who Toomey says he supports. The senator now appears to be doing the same thing with several Pennsylvania district court nominees who he himself actually recommended to the White House.

Specifically, he is refusing to submit the “blue slips” for Eastern District nominee John Younge, and for Western District nominees Robert Colville, Susan Paradise Baxter, and Marilyn Horan. All four were recommended by both Toomey and his Democratic colleague, Bob Casey. When the White House nominated them back in July, both senators praised them. However, only one of the senators actually did something to move the nominations: Casey swiftly submitted his “blue slips,” which is how senators signal that they don’t object to the Judiciary Committee considering a judicial nominee from their state. Blue slips aren’t part of Senate or committee rules; they are simply a courtesy of the chairman, who decides for himself the importance he gives them. Under current practice, the chairman won’t schedule a hearing until he gets blue slips from both home state senators.

In the nearly five months since the four Pennsylvanians were nominated upon Toomey’s recommendation, he has refused to submit his blue slips. When a reporter from the Butler Eagle asked for an explanation, he was told that Toomey was waiting for the committee to complete its background investigation of the nominees. This is the same line he eventually settled on with Restrepo, an explanation that was full of holes and simply not believable. Nor is it any more believable now. From the Butler Eagle:

According to a Toomey staffer, the senator will not submit the blue slip for any judicial candidate until the investigation is done, just to make sure the candidates’ backgrounds are clear. If any problems turn up in the investigation and the blue slip already is turned in, there is nothing to stop a vote on the nominee, the staffer said.

That’s simply false. Just ask Steve Six, a Tenth Circuit nominee from Kansas in 2011, when Democrats held the Senate majority. Republicans home state senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran submitted their blue slips, and Six had a confirmation hearing. But afterward, the senators rescinded their blue slips. Then-Chairman Patrick Leahy, who supported the nominee, was not at all happy about this. Nevertheless, he chose to accede to the home-state senators’ modified wishes, and he never held a committee vote for Six, which essentially ended the nomination.

Does Toomey really think the current chairman, who is of his own party, would not show a similar courtesy to Toomey that Democrat Patrick Leahy showed to the Republican senators from Kansas? Chuck Grassley might not appreciate Toomey’s lack of faith in him.

Or perhaps Toomey is assuming his constituents won’t realize that the story he is peddling makes no sense.

With Restrepo and four district court nominees, Toomey continues to collaborate with Washington, DC party leaders to obstruct judicial nominees he says he supports. Individuals and businesses in Pennsylvania who rely on a functioning court system are the ones who pay the price.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the nomination of L. Felipe Restrepo to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. That Restrepo hasn’t yet been confirmed says volumes about Senate Republicans, and especially Pat Toomey.

When Restrepo was nominated, both of his home state senators – Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey – released enthusiastic statements of support. Unfortunately, only one of them matched his words with deeds. Casey submitted his “blue slip,” signaling his approval for the Judiciary Committee to take up the nomination. Toomey didn’t. That’s critically important, because under current practice, the chairman won’t schedule a hearing let alone hold a committee vote without blue slips from both home state senators. So as Toomey sat on his hands, month after month went by with no hearing for Restrepo. As winter turned to spring, people were wondering where Toomey was on Restrepo’s nomination.

Toomey finally broke his silence and blamed Grassley, saying that he was waiting for the committee’s background investigation to be completed, an explanation that didn’t pass the laugh test. After all, Restrepo already had a thorough background investigation for his confirmation to the district court in 2013, so why would it take so long to complete one to cover only the short interval since then? And why didn’t Toomey mention this when he had been asked about it earlier? Nor had Grassley said anything about this initially. After this embarrassment, the two Republican senators coordinated their stories more effectively (as has been the case with Grassley and the other GOP Senators who, unlike their Democratic counterparts, withhold their blue slips for months).

Finally, Toomey submitted his blue slip on May 14, half a year after the nomination. By this time, the vacancy had been formally designated a judicial emergency, and it became known that a second vacancy would be opening on the court during the summer. Fortunately, there was time for Chairman Grassley to schedule a hearing for Restrepo before the Memorial Day break. And perhaps he would have done so, if Toomey had made any effort to make it happen. In fact, with Toomey’s acquiescence, the hearing was delayed until June 10, nearly a full month after Toomey had submitted his blue slip.

But that didn’t end the delays. The next step in the confirmation process is the committee vote. Grassley put a Restrepo vote on the agenda for late June, which was great. However, Grassley has routinely exercised the right to hold over a vote on a nominee without cause, and his staff signaled he would do this to Restrepo (again, with no explanation as to why). This gave Toomey plenty of time to do what his constituents were asking him to do: step up and ask Grassley not to needlessly delay advancing Restrepo to the full Senate. Unfortunately, when asked if Toomey would talk to Grassley, Toomey’s office ducked the question, saying that the Pennsylvania senator isn’t a member of the committee and does not control the scheduling of votes. Of course, senators routinely speak to their colleagues to help advance home-state nominees who they support. No one was tying Toomey’s hands but himself.

Finally, on July 9, eight months after being nominated, Restrepo was approved by the committee by unanimous voice vote. At that point, it was up to Toomey’s fellow Republican, Majority Leader McConnell, when to hold a confirmation vote. With Toomey’s help, the Senate could have confirmed Restrepo quickly, and certaily before the summer recess would begin a month later. It soon became clear, however, that Toomey was not pressing McConnell on timing on a vote, and the senators left town until September.

And now here we are, in mid-November, and Restrepo remains unconfirmed, the result of Toomey’s collaboration with his party leaders to obstruct judicial nominations as much as possible. For individuals and businesses in Pennsylvania (as well as New Jersey and Delaware, the other two states within the Third Circuit), having two vacancies unfilled means not having timely access to justice. This judicial emergency could have and should have been filled many months ago.

Restrepo was nominated one year ago today. It is an anniversary that Pat Toomey should be ashamed of.

Progress in moving judicial nominations is always welcome. But small increments of progress also serve to shine a light on the greater obstruction that is going on. That happened earlier this week when the Senate held a confirmation vote on one long-waiting nominee, but did nothing on eight additional nominees who were long ago fully vetted and advanced without opposition by the Judiciary Committee.

And it’s happening Wednesday morning, as the Committee holds a hearing for four district court nominees. It’s good that Chairman Chuck Grassley is holding a hearing for two nominees from Iowa and one apiece from New York and California. But it begs several questions. For instance, since there are ten other nominees waiting for their opportunity to appear before the committee, why are there only four nominees at today’s hearing, rather than five or six? And why has Grassley never held more than one hearing per month? No wonder there is such a backlog of nominees at the committee stage, most of whom were nominated back in July or earlier.

In fact, all of them were nominated before one of the nominees up today, Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger, who Grassley allowed to leapfrog over all the others since he recommended her to the White House to serve in Iowa’s Southern District. President Obama nominated Ebinger last month. So why no hearing for Mary Barzee Flores of Florida, who was nominated way back in February on the recommendation of Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio? Why no hearing for any of the four nominees for district courts in Pennsylvania, who were nominated in July upon the joint recommendation of Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey?

You shouldn’t have to have been hand-picked by Chuck Grassley to deserve a timely committee hearing. As chairman, Chuck Grassley should be treating all nominees fairly. If he wants to be taken seriously in his claims that he is conducting himself responsibly as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he should ensure that each of the remaining ten nominees has a hearing before Thanksgiving.

Good news: The Senate held a confirmation vote on a judicial nominee today. Bad news: The Senate held a confirmation vote on only one judicial nominee today.

Ann Donnelly, set to fill a judicial emergency in the Eastern District of New York, was cleared by a unanimous Judiciary Committee way back on June 4, more than four months ago. On the same day, the committee also unanimously voted to advance two other New York nominees to the full Senate. Yet after months of delay, Majority Leader McConnell is finally allowing a vote on only one of the three. Also being ignored are an additional six judicial nominees from other states who were unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee. Most of the stalled nominees have been awaiting their floor vote since June or July. All should have been confirmed by now.

It is hard to fathom a legitimate reason to refuse to schedule a vote on judicial nominees who have been fully vetted and approved by the Judiciary Committee. After all, that is one of the most important functions of the United States Senate, one that is specifically tasked to it by the Constitution. Article III, which established the federal courts, was not some afterthought tossed into the nation’s charter document. When the Senate abdicates its responsibility to consider judicial nominees, it sabotages the effectiveness of the judicial system that is indispensable in protecting the rights of the American people.

Like President Obama, George W. Bush had a Senate controlled by the opposing party in his last two years in office. But the disparity in how the Senate carried out its constitutional responsibilities is stark. While the Democratically-controlled Senate had voted on 33 of Bush’s judges at this point in 2007, New York’s Ann Donnelly will be only the eighth judge voted on this year. Vacancies nationwide are up by more than 50% since the beginning of the year, and judicial emergencies have more than doubled.

So why are Senate Republicans refusing to hold confirmation votes for New York nominees Lawrence Vilardo and LaShann DeArcy Hall? Why must individuals and businesses in Tennessee be forced to endure understaffed courts rather than have the Senate vote on nominees Waverly Crenshaw and Travis McDonough? Why do Senate Republicans refuse to allow votes on Mimi Wright of Minnesota, Paula Xinis of Maryland, and John Vazquez of New Jersey?

Perhaps most egregious is the Senate GOP’s obstinate refusal to grant timely consideration to L. Felipe Restrepo of Pennsylvania, whose nomination to the Third Circuit is nearly a year old. Nominated with the support of both home state senators – Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey – Restrepo was fully vetted and approved by the Judiciary Committee without opposition. He would fill a vacancy that has been designated a judicial emergency. While his nomination has been pending, a second vacancy has opened on the same court, making his confirmation even more vital. Yet despite his words of support for Restrepo, Toomey has collaborated with his GOP colleagues in making sure that his eventual confirmation be delayed as long as possible.

So today’s confirmation vote for Ann Donnelly is good news. But the Senate’s refusal to vote on the eight other long-waiting circuit and district court nominees is bad news – bad news for the Senate, bad news for the judiciary, and bad news for the Americans whose access to justice is being sacrificed for partisan reasons.

Yesterday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley announced a scheduled hearing next week for four district court nominees, three of whom were nominated in July. Once again, he is skipping over Florida’s Mary Barzee Flores, who was nominated way back in February. But he’s skipping over nine other nominees, as well.

That’s because the fourth nominee at the hearing is from Iowa. Upon Grassley’s recommendation, President Obama nominated Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger for the Southern District of Iowa on September 15. Grassley has allowed her to leapfrog over:

During a press conference at the National Press Club in April, 2015, Chairman Grassley stated that under his chairmanship, the Judiciary Committee would consider judicial nominees in the order they came:

I want you to know we take them up the way they come up to us. Particularly, that is true of judges, as an example. So the priority’s set by what we receive from the White House.

Other things being equal, few would complain when a chairman moves quickly to advance a nominee from their home state, within reasonable limits. Last year, for instance, then-Chairman Patrick Leahy scheduled a hearing for Vermont nominee Geoffrey Crawford ahead of three nominees who had been nominated less than three weeks before him, one of whom was for a circuit court. (He also skipped over three other nominees for whom their Republican home state senators were refusing to submit blue slips.) Leahy was also holding two hearings a month, so little time was lost.

But ten nominees are a lot to leapfrog, especially when nine of them were recommended and publicly endorsed by both home state senators, and when most were nominated long before Ebinger. Also relevant is that Grassley’s chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee has been marked with such partisanship. For instance, with the collaboration of his fellow Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania (who refused to turn in his blue slip for a nominee he'd publicly endorsed on the day he was nominated), Grassley was able to delay a hearing for Third Circuit nominee Phil Restrepo for seven months.

And a quick look at the list of skipped nominees shows that Pennsylvania is bearing the brunt of this delay, as well. Four of the skipped nominees would serve in that state. All four were recommended by both Republican Senator Pat Toomey and Democratic Senator Bob Casey, and all were nominated way back in July. Three of them would serve in the Western District, where these seats have been vacant since 2013. Casey submitted his blue slip long ago, but Toomey is once again delaying, as he did with Restrepo.

Grassley is playing self-serving and partisan games with our nation’s nonpartisan judiciary, which is a problem for everyone. And since Toomey is collaborating with Grassley’s obstruction, the people of Pennsylvania are getting particularly hurt.

Sen. Pat Toomey is running for reelection next year in a state that tends to favor Democrats in presidential election years. So it is no surprise that the former head of the far right Club For Growth opened his campaign by presenting himself as a moderate. As station WITF reports, Toomey presented the area of judicial nominations as an example of his ability to work across the aisle:

"One of the areas [Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and I] work together regularly on is filling vacancies on the federal bench," Toomey said. "The fact is in the four and a half or so years I've been in the Senate, we have been able to recruit, vet, nominate, confirm 15 men and women across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

Many judicial appointments are held up by partisan bickering.

Unfortunately, judges are one of the areas where Toomey has regularly put conservative ideology and the interests of party leaders in Washington, DC, ahead of the interests of the people of Pennsylvania.

The current example involves Phil Restrepo, President Obama’s nominee for the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Administrative Office of U.S. Courts has formally classified the vacancy Restrepo would fill as a “judicial emergency” because the caseload per judge is so high. When judges are overburdened, it is hard for the court to provide justice to litigants in a timely, efficient, and fair manner, forcing too many people to learn the hard way that justice delayed is justice denied.

President Obama nominated L. Felipe Restrepo way back in November, and both Toomey and Casey praised the nomination. That’s important, because the Judiciary Committee generally won’t even give a judicial nominee a hearing until their home-state senators formally signal their approval on a blue slip of paper. Casey his submitted his blue slip immediately, but Toomey did not, giving cover to committee chairman Chuck Grassley’s efforts to delay the hearing for as long as possible (part of the GOP’s efforts to obstruct a Democratic president’s efforts to staff the nation’s courts with fair, just, and qualified judges in the hopes of leaving as many vacancies as possible for a Republican successor to Obama to fill). It took a full seven months before Grassley held the hearing, far longer than was necessary. The senator faced a torrent of criticism at home for his role in the delay, and Toomey’s efforts to explain Restrepo’s delay raised more questions than they answered.

When it became clear that Grassley was planning to delay the scheduled committee vote by two weeks for no reason other than delay’s sake, Toomey could have interceded with his fellow Republican. That is exactly the kind of thing that home-state senators do for nominees they support. But Toomey chose not to ask Grassley to hold the vote as scheduled.

Unfortunately, the Restrepo nomination is not the first time Toomey has put ideology and partisan judicial obstruction ahead of Pennsylvanians’ needs. In late 2013 and early 2014, he voted in lockstep with Washington Republicans to prevent President Obama from filling any of the three vacant judgeships on the critically important D.C. Circuit Court. Second in importance only to the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit is the exclusive court to consider appeals of a wide variety of federal agency regulations and decisions affecting the entire country. Dominated by ideological conservatives, the court was becoming increasingly notorious for issuing troubling decisions favoring the powerful and limiting the role government can play to address national problems. Working to keep the D.C. Circuit both short-staffed and dominated by far-right conservatives certainly didn’t help the people of Pennsylvania. Yet he voted against all three highly qualified nominees: Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard, and Robert Wilkins.

Toomey apparently didn’t mention any of this in his re-election speech, but it is something Pennsylvanians ought to know when they go to the polls next year.

Third Circuit nominee L. Felipe Restrepo was approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee last week, but Senate Majority Leader McConnell is expected to delay a confirmation vote unless Senator Pat Toomey intervenes on behalf of a nominee he says he supports. Consistent with how Democrats in the Senate treated George W. Bush’s Third Circuit nominee from Pennsylvania in 2007, when Thomas Hardiman was confirmed just one week after his committee vote, Toomey ought to be pushing McConnell for a vote this month, before the August recess.

Toomey and McConnell are apparently trying to make Pennsylvanians think Toomey is doing that, but they have not actually stated anything of the sort. Keep in mind that the key item Toomey is being asked to address is timing, with a vote this month. Pennsylvania newspaper The Legal Intelligencer reports:

“Sen. Toomey supports the nomination of Judge Restrepo for the Third Circuit,” Anderson said in an email to The Legal. “As part of his efforts on this issue, the senator has spoken directly with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to emphasize the importance of getting Judge Restrepo confirmed.”

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said that while a date for the vote has not yet been scheduled, “Sen. Toomey has been calling us, so it's on the leader's radar.”

Note that Toomey and McConnell omit any mention of timing. Did Toomey ask for a prompt confirmation vote? Did he urge McConnell to let the Senate vote this month? Did he mention the precedent of confirming Judge Hardiman in 2007 just one week after he was approved by the Judiciary Committee?

Considering that timing is the crux of the issue, it is interesting that Toomey and McConnell’s characterizations of their communication both omit any mention of timing.

So will McConnell allow a vote this month? If Toomey chooses not to press for a July vote, he’ll certainly be making deliberate delay by McConnell much easier.

The Senate Judiciary Committee just held a long overdue vote on Third Circuit nominee Phil Restrepo of Pennsylvania. To no one’s surprise, he has the committee’s unanimous support. His nomination now moves to the Senate floor, where it is up to Mitch McConnell to schedule a confirmation vote.

So let’s review some of the reasons McConnell should let the Senate vote to confirm him quickly:

The vacancy Restrepo would fill has been designated a judicial emergency.

There’s a second vacancy on the same court, adding to the strain on the serving judges, as well as the parties before them.

Restrepo has the bipartisan support of his home state senators.

He has been vetted and approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee.

The vacancy Restrepo would fill has been open for more than two years already.

He was nominated eight months ago, way back in November of last year.

The Senate needs to make up for lost time, since committee chairman Chuck Grassley refused to even hold a hearing for Restrepo until seven months after the nomination. (Senator Pat Toomey’s collaboration with Grassley by withholding his “blue slip” made that delay possible.)

Restrepo would expand experiential diversity on the Third Circuit, becoming the first judge on that court to have experience as a public defender.

He’d be the first Latino from Pennsylvania on the Third Circuit.

Everyone on the ABA panel that looked at his qualifications agreed that he was qualified. In fact, a substantial majority of the panel said he was “well qualified,” which is the highest rating.

Now let’s look at the reasons McConnell might have for refusing to hold a timely confirmation vote:

The nominating president is a Democrat.

The nominating president is a Democrat.

The nominating president is a Democrat.

It’s pretty clear that the reasons for a quick confirmation vote are a lot better than the reasons for delay. But given McConnell’s appetite for obstruction, it’s equally clear that he is more likely to choose needless delay.

The person best positioned to help Restrepo is McConnell’s fellow Republican, Senator Toomey. As noted above, despite his public statements praising Restrepo, Toomey collaborated with Grassley when the committee chair was looking for a way to delay the nominee’s hearing. Appropriately enough, Toomey got slammed in the Pennsylvania press for this until he finally relented.

It makes you wonder just how much Toomey’s statements of support are worth.

Toomey can do better. He can talk to McConnell, who has every reason to be responsive to members of his caucus. And while Toomey’s talking about the needs of Pennsylvanians, he can also remind McConnell how the Democratic-controlled Senate treated George W. Bush’s Third Circuit nominee from Pennsylvania in his last two years.

Like Restrepo, nominee Thomas Hardiman was a district court judge; he had been nominated to the federal bench by Bush earlier in the president’s term. Like Restrepo, Hardiman was nominated to fill a judicial emergency. And like Restrepo, Hardiman had the unanimous support of the Judiciary Committee.